ARTIST STATEMENT

Our experience is layered with complex systems reaching through tiny cells, flowering vegetation, and distant galaxies.  The abundance of sensory information in the work is like the external environment we often find ourselves in.  One could consider the varied surroundings we encounter everyday ranging from grass, to organisms, to the compartments in a drawer.  The color, scale, and material of that surface changes and affects our psyche.  I see landscape as a point where the terrestrial plain meets the sky and as a primal human condition which acts as a metaphor for the public and private self.  My work sources structures from molecular, biological, anatomical, architectural, celestial, and cultural systems all of which provide multiple views of a constructed self.  Overall, I both reveal and conceal my own representations during the process of working in an attempt to synthesize logic, emotion, source, and process.  The awareness of analytical and intuitive impulses relates to the concept of how we form identity.  The work is evidence of this interchange.

BIOGRAPHY

Renee Robbins currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois and has also had a studio in South Bend, Indiana, Lexington, Kentucky, and Lansing, Michigan.  She received her BFA from the University of Kentucky, followed by the MFA in painting and printmaking from Michigan State University. As an artist, her work has been recognized with awards, grants, publications, and through selection for national exhibitions. Her selected exhibition highlights include the Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art, South Bend Regional Art Museum, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, and the Ai Gallery.  She received a grant to study in Tokyo, Japan and her work can be found in the publication “Best of Michigan Artists and Artisans”, 2006.